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The artwork of George Longfish is celebrated the world over, and scattered almost as widely. Thanks to the efforts of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, some of Longfish's most important works will soon converge for an exhibition in Missoula, and then head out on a road trip.

On Friday, the MMAC announced it had been awarded $20,000 from the NEA in support of the traveling exhibition, “George Longfish - A Retrospective.” The exhibition will feature paintings, prints and three-dimensional masks by the influential Native American artist.

“He's one of the leading contemporary Indian artists we have in this country,” said Manuella Well-Off Man, curator of the MMAC and coordinator of the traveling exhibition. “He's very important and influential to an entire generation of artists.”

Three prints in the traveling exhibition will come from the Missoula Art Museum's collection; the rest of the works have been loaned by collectors and museums outside Missoula.

Though little of the work featured in the exhibition is from Montana, Longfish is no stranger to these parts. He served as director of the University of Montana's graduate program in American Indian art from 1972 to 1973.

Longfish subsequently served as professor of historical and contemporary Native arts at the University of California-Davis from 1973 to 2003, and director of the C.N. Gorman Museum at UC-Davis from 1974 to 1996.

According to Well-Off Man, Longfish is notable for the way he combines text, pop-art and realism in his works.

“His work deals in very creative ways with contemporary Native American issues such as discrimination and environmental issues,” Well-Off Man said. “Some of his paintings are really humorous, some more serious or ironic, and many are very political.”

The first stop of the exhibition's national tour will be at MMAC's Meloy and Paxson galleries, located in UM's Performing Arts and Radio/Television Center, from March 9 through April 20. Longfish will serve as artist-in-residence in Missoula from April 3-6. The four-day residency will include workshops for students on the Flathead Reservation, class visits and a public lecture at UM.

After the exhibition's debut in Missoula, it will travel to the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, S.D.; Salish Kootenai College in Pablo; the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art in Great Falls; the Holter Museum of Art in Helena; the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings, S.D.; the Museum of the Southwest in Midland, Texas; and The University of Northern Iowa Gallery of Art in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Reporter Joe Nickell can be reached at 523-5358 or at jnickell@missoulian.com

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